Review: Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



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What a stimulating book, an excellent text for a college history or political science course. Better yet, something for high school students to discuss briefly, then read later in university so they can readily see their own thinking mature. Timothy Snyder's work can be gainfully read by a popular audience for some basic general conclusions about history; yet the same work, on closer reading, yields deeper insight and fodder for discussion about the very meaning of human political organization and the development of civilization -- what separates us from the beasts, from tribal warfare, from that Hobbesian life nasty, brutish, and short? He reminds us how quickly we can slide back into that nasty, brutish, and short existence.
The author notes, with devastating clarity, the relative peace enjoyed by citizens, the protection granted by mere citizenship, compared to the incredible typically-unremembered horror experienced by the stateless, those deprived of citizenship by questionable legal means and by warfare. He points out that the doubly, even triply stateless zones in central Europe were particularly bereft of life and property, swept over by Soviet then Nazi then Soviet occupation. Such is great material for political science students -- what defines a state? Further, the large endnotes section supports the authors' sweeping statements, and proves a fertile source for more research in its own right.
The author also sharpens the guilty conscience of the bystanders, in proving the general complicity of the majority in the rape and pillage and simple murder of their neighbors -- we speak uncomprehendingly of the genocidal Rwandan massacre in our time, implicitly distancing ourselves by placing that in darkest Africa; and we distance ourselves from the Holocaust by declaring that only a few Nazis were responsible; but Snyder documents the cooperation of the local population and certainly the German public in the decivilizing terrorizing acts of the 1930s and 40s.
Revolution always eats its own progeny. As Snyder points out, the most recent US overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi demonstrate the greater importance of the State, as more people have suffered and died after those revolutions than ever would have if the State had survived -- instead we took the easy path of destruction, trusting blindly that something better would naturally emerge...unfortunately that is never true: naturally, the Lord of the Flies is the human lot, unless we keep organized, keep struggling for the right. I hope the past four years of purposeful destruction of government in the US can be repaired by the current administration.